Slice is a new music application for Android, which combines a clever way of discovering new music and the exciting new Echo Nest/Play.me collaboration. Details on how it will work are scarce at this stage, but the screenshot gives us an idea. You’ll be listening to a track which is placed at the centre of a pie-chart, with each piece of the surround pie representing a similar artist or genre you may enjoy.

Slice call this visual music discovery, but that’s not all it does, as it’s one of the fist applications to take advantage of Echo Nest and Play.me joining forces. Echo Nest is a platform that pulls together data on songs and their artists – anything from reviews to ‘hotness’ – and provides listener data for the developer too. All this is very well, but without music to listen too, it’s largely useless. Step in Play.me, a digital on-demand service that provides five hours of streaming audio per week, for free.

Partially owned by Sony Music, although they are actively signing other labels, Play.me’s catalogue of tunes will be available through Slice, complete with all of Echo Nest’s information and analytics; ultimately providing you with new music and plenty of trivia too. Once your five free hours is up, you’ll have the option to upgrade to a Premium account, which costs $10 per month for both mobile and web access.

Slice will be released on Saturday 15th May inside the Android Market and will be free to download, but it’ll be US-only for now.